Catherine Savini has an interesting piece in a recent issue of Inside Higher Ed. Although it’s aimed at college professors, it applies equally well to secondary educators. The issue is a familiar one: how to respond to students who don’t speak or… Read More ›
Teaching & Learning
Gym Jordan, grammar expert
Leading Republican congressman Jim Jordan is well-known as an expert on “pronouns“:
A number theory discovery by a 12-year-old Nigerian boy! And one by an 11-year-old Massachusetts girl!
Everyone knows the stereotype: mathematical discoveries are made by white and Asian males in their 20s and 30s. Right? Well, like all stereotypes, there’s a certain amount of statistical reality that supports this impression and obscures all examples to the… Read More ›
Harvard, Homosexuality, and the Shaping of American Culture
The title of this post is actually only the subtitle of the book, as you can see in the image of the cover. But “Harvard, Homosexuality, and the Shaping of American Culture” is more specific than the book’s main title,… Read More ›
Why are you still here?
A positive — dare I say uplifting? — story about Zoom learning as we close out annus horribilis 2020! From Patrick Honner: It was the last day of school in 2020 and my students were in breakout rooms finishing up a… Read More ›
Dr. Fauci recalls taking ancient Greek, Latin, and philosophy…
My cousin Mike Laskey interviewed Dr. Fauci on a podcast! Among other important things, we learn that Dr. Fauci was most heavily influenced by his college courses in Greek, Latin, and philosophy. As you can surmise from his public persona,… Read More ›
Who reads poetry anyway?
Most likely you expect that I’m going to answer the question in the title by saying “Not me. I don’t read poetry.” If you’re a pedant — or if you believe that I am — you expect that I’ll say… Read More ›
The Language Lover’s Puzzle Book
I just wish this book had been published 20 years ago! Alex Bellos has compiled an amazing collection of language-related puzzles in the Language Lover’s Puzzle Book, released a few month ago in the UK and more recently elsewhere in the English-speaking… Read More ›
When will I ever use this in real life? (No one ever “solves for x”! (Or do they?))
As I wrote eight years ago, it seems that I discuss this topic every couple of years. But there’s always a new reason to do so. Here is the 2020 reason, expressed in this cartoon: What we have here is a… Read More ›
A number of galactic proportions
Take, say, 73 little cubes (blocks or ordinary D6 dice). Could you arrange them into three perfect cubes? I’ll wait while you try to solve this problem… OK, you probably started by taking 64 of them to make a 4×4×4… Read More ›